


your universe is full (but in my world, there is only you)

by phae



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends With Benefits, Idiots in Love, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-21 12:22:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3692118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phae/pseuds/phae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint’s not jealous, okay? He’s genuinely happy that Phil’s getting everything he’s ever wanted. He’s maybe a little upset that <i>he’s</i> not want Phil wants, but he’s not jealous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A good chunk of this fic was first posted on my tumblr in a rather slapdash fashion, and a few things have changed from those first draft bits.
> 
> Title is from SR-71's _My World_.

**NOW**

 

Clint’s not jealous, okay? He’s not, because he has absolutely no reason to be. Phil’s his—well, Clint’s not entirely sure _what_ his relationship to Phil is, but he does know what it’s _not_ , and they are definitely not “Facebook Official,” whatever the hell that’s supposed to mean, no matter what Tasha says.

 

They just, uh, hook up. Sometimes. Nothing exclusive, nothing planned. Just when they both have some free time, and they happen to run into one another loitering in the dorm commons, or ducking out of a party for some fresh air, or when the class they share gets cancelled on the fly.

 

So it’s totally okay that Clint happened upon Phil on a coffee date with Steve Rogers. Admittedly, at the time, he froze up and slunk back out of the campus coffee shop ( _their_ coffee shop, a traitorous part of his brain whispered) before Phil could spot him. And yeah, he’s been ignoring Phil’s texts and has stayed holed up in his dorm room with the door locked so Phil can’t just walk in like he normally does. But that has nothing to do with something as petty as _jealousy._

 

'Cause honestly, Clint's _happy_ for Phil. He knows, better than most, all the reasons why Phil’s been crushing on Rogers since forever ago. He’s acted as Phil’s confidante after too many cups of spiked punch have left him smashed and chatty, waxing poetic about Rogers’ eyes, Rogers’ ass, Rogers’ smile, so drunk that he stops making any kind of real sense. (“Dude’s eyes are _blue,_ Coulson. The hell are you getting this fucking kaleidoscope of colorsfrom, man?”)

 

Unfortunately, Clint’s also the one that grabs Phil’s arm when his knees buckle whenever they walk past Rogers doing something so ideally heroic like rescuing a kitten from where it’s stuck up in a tree, thoroughly distracting Phil from what Clint was saying about his day with Peter at the science museum just by being the walking, talking embodiment of perfection that comes so naturally to the guy.

 

Clint knows that the only reason Phil fell into their whatever-it-is was because he needed the practice, didn’t want to risk Rogers kicking him to the curb ‘cause he was inexperienced. Because Phil was. Inexperienced. When they started this shit, he was like every virgin cliché from teen movies all rolled into one. And yet, somehow, Phil was still one of the sexiest people Clint’d ever had the pleasure to undress, blushing and clumsily poking Clint in the eye when he was trying to pull Clint’s shirt over his head.

 

But Clint’s all too aware that he’s only ever been a stand-in until Phil could land the real deal. He accepted that fact right at the start, and luckily Phil was upfront about his intentions and said something before Clint had a chance to open his big mouth and spill the beans about how perfect Phil is and how he’s been a little bit in love with him since the day they met.

 

So no, he’s not jealous. The sick feeling that hit his stomach that day at the coffee shop was a lot more like heartbreak.

 

* * *

 

**THEN**

 

Phil has never been a guy who was quote-unquote _smooth_ when in love. At best, his awestruck, awkward bluntness when confronted by someone he finds attractive could possibly be termed _cute_. Like in that way that an overeager puppy jumps up and licks at whatever he can reach because someone leaned over to pat him on the head, and people coo at said puppy and say he’s cute even as they carefully push him away.

 

He lucked out, really, that the crush that dominated the majority of his embarrassing high school years was Steve Rogers, who is just as sincerely sweet to anyone who offers him a polite smile as he is a sassy little shit to anyone who’s rude and disrespectful to the people around them.

 

It was almost achingly obvious that Phil had an outrageous boner for Steve back in those days. Granted, most of the student body became mildly obsessed after little string-bean Stevie shot up and out over the course of a puberty-intensive summer, but Phil had been just as moony over the bag of bones kid who refused to back down from the school bullies as he was for the muscle-bound jock Steve evolved into their junior year. Admittedly, the sex dreams hadn’t started until _after_ Steve’s magical transformation, but the crush had held fast well into the beginning of senior year.

 

Still, Steve never made him feel stupid or ashamed for his crush, which didn’t help all that much seeing as it just led to Phil falling a little bit in love with him, even knowing the whole time that it was never going to amount to anything. Because Steve was sweet, yes, but he was also honest, and he was upfront about the fact that he didn’t see Phil as anything more than a friend, and he wasn’t going to jeopardize that by going on some kind of pity-date and stringing Phil along for the ride.

 

It was a very trying time for Phil, attempting to fall out of love with Steve.

 

At least until he went off to college (the same as Steve’s, and that was purely a coincidence as he’d made a point of never asking Steve where he was even applying to) and met Clint Barton.

 

Because Clint Barton is the kind of guy that Phil doubts he’ll ever be able to get over.

 

Clint, who’s attending the university on a sports scholarship—for archery of all things, Phil didn’t even know that was a sport they awarded scholarships for—but never flakes on any of his classes if he can help it, even the pre-reqs and core essentials that he hates for being alternatively not challenging enough (Intro to Physics) and far too challenging (English Lit: Old to Middle English Classics).

 

Clint, who spends his free-time volunteering as a Big Brother for a local kid who lives with his aunt and uncle and is much too smart (and much too small) for his own good, and with the way Clint goes on about the kid—even when he’s scowling and putting up a front like he doesn’t think the world of Peter—it’s so glaringly obvious that his favorite days are always his volunteering days.

 

Clint, who watches the same awful reality shows that Phil always takes a guilty pleasure in and calls in favors—from Tony Stark of all people—to get Phil a copy of any new episode he’s missed because of one of his evening classes, and he always insists on seeing it again with Phil just so he can watch Phil watch the show and inadvertently spoil all the juiciest drama bits when his whole attention will shift to Phil in anticipation of his upcoming reaction.

Clint, who ceaselessly flirts with Phil and whose grin shifts from something confident to something just this side of dopey when Phil tries to flirt back but actually makes like an awkward turtle instead, because Clint flirts with everyone, easy as breathing, and takes any and all responses he garners in stride.

 

Honestly, falling in love with Clint Barton is so much worse than falling in love with Steve Rogers.

 

* * *

 

Phil’s first meeting with Clint is memorable because every moment with Clint is somehow always absurdly memorable.

 

Phil is in line at the campus coffee shop just inside the Student Union building, and the young man standing in front of him is bouncing along to some song, the white string from his earbuds swinging back and forth, and he’s shimming his ass in such a way that Phil really can’t be blamed for the way his eyes get stuck on the hot pink letters splattered across the seat of the sweatpants the guy’s wearing.

 

Phil’s so distracted by following the finely shaped gluts shaking in front of him that he doesn’t even realize it’s his turn to order until the barista clears her throat extra-loud and the guy whose ass he’s been staring at throws his head back and laughs as he slides over to wait on his drink at the end of the counter.

 

Mildly mortified, Phil shuffles forward and orders his latte with his head firmly tucked down to his chest in a poor attempt to hide his blush. He turns from the cash register before the woman can hand back his change and trudges over to wait for his drink, careful to angle his body away from the guy so that we won’t seem like even more of a pervy creeper who’s just loitering around to ogle some dude’s assets.

 

Except that the guy—Clint, of course it’s Clint, who else would Phil make such a horrible first impression on?—jostles his shoulder until Phil finally looks up and is blinded by the bright grin he’s greeted with.

 

Phil glances around, but it’s just the two of them waiting here, while the two baristas are busy mixing drinks and a freshman girl—gotta be a freshman because freshman are the only ones who bother wearing the school logo outside of a sports event—is standing off to the side, attention glued to her phone. “Uh…hi?” he hazards.

 

“Hey.” Clint smiles at him, and Phil has since become very aware of how devastatingly charming Clint is when he smiles for real, but never more so than that moment when he’s confronted by it for the very first time. “So, what’d you think?”

 

Phil’s brows knit together in confusion. “I’m sorry?”

 

“It’s not false advertising, right? I can totally pull off the Juicy pants.” And Clint, being Clint—as Phil will soon learn—pivots and juts out his hip, invariably drawing Phil’s gaze back to his ass.

 

And Phil, because he is Phil, and therefore incapable of holding his tongue around an attractive person no matter how ridiculous the thoughts that are running through his mind at the time, blurts out, “Were I in your shoes, I’d have probably gone for ‘bootylicious.’”

 

Clint laughs, bright and sharp and delighted, and Phil’s world abruptly halts on its axis and begins a new orbit around one Clint Barton.


	2. Chapter 2

**NOW**

 

Clint spends the next week basically locked up is his dorm, for all the good it does him. His room is a veritable shrine to all things Phil Coulson without any real effort on Clint’s part to make it so. It was just lucky happenstance that whenever they were looking for some alone time, they’d head for Clint’s space. His roommate washed out a few weeks into the semester and Res Life has yet to assign him a new one. Meanwhile Nick, Phil’s roommate, has no respect for the sock-on-the-door-knob protocols of shared living spaces.

 

There’s Phil’s history textbook on his desk, from that time Clint had lured him over with some tasteful dick pics when Phil’d been trying to head for the library to study. Feeling warm and lazy after their athletic alternative to academics, Clint had curled up on Phil’s chest and dozed off. He’d woken up an hour later with his head in Phil’s lap and nimble fingers combing through his hair while Phil flipped through history pages with his other hand.

 

(And shit, Phil’s probably gonna need that book back, huh? It’s nearly time for finals, after all.)

 

Phil’s hoodie, a relic of his varsity soccer days in high school, is still hanging in the closet. Clint had nabbed it one opportune Fall evening and never bothered to return it. Phil had been looking for it for weeks, knew Clint had to have it, but with the mess Clint usually left of his clothes all over the floor, Phil had never even bothered to check the closet for it. Clint had spent his first day of self-imposed exile wrapped up in that hoodie, before he’d gotten irrationally pissed off at the way it no longer smelled like Phil.

 

(He’ll probably keep it anyway. That’s a thing, right? Clint’s sure he stumbled across something about holding onto mementos to remind you of a past lover in a romance paperback at some point. )

 

A stack of Phil’s DVDs is still on the dormer shelf from when they’d had a movie night a few weeks back. They’d only made it through a film and a half before relatively innocent not-cuddling evolved into pretty heavy petting and then very enthusiastic frottage. Clint had come down from the high of orgasm and scrunched up his face in confusion at the cheesy music playing on loop sounding throughout the room until he realized the movie had ended and cycled back to the menu screen.

 

(Clint should give those back. He’ll only lose them or forget to put the disks back in their cases and step on a loose one, otherwise.)

 

At his lowest moments, Clint tortures himself wondering what odds and ends Phil’s going to leave around Rogers’ room.

 

He usually ends up taking an unexpected nap shortly after entertaining such thoughts, having exhausted himself stubbornly holding back tears instead of letting the frustration out.

 

* * *

 

**THEN**

 

Phil is about 90% positive that Clint is sleeping with Natasha Romanoff, who is some kind of international goddess studying abroad in the states from Russia. At least he is until he meets Steve’s childhood friend Bucky Barnes, who is most definitely sleeping with Natasha. Though, with the way Bucky smiles at Clint (and just about any moderately attractive person in range, really) sometimes, all charm and a edge of interest, Phil starts to entertain the idea that all three of them are sleeping together in a polyamorous pile. Objectively, Phil recognizes that they are all ridiculously beautiful people and that threesome would be insanely hot, but mostly he just prays that Bucky isn’t anywhere close to Clint’s type because Phil will have no chance with Clint if that’s the case.

Because Bucky is handsome and suave and loyal, and actually would be right up Phil’s alley if he hadn’t had the misfortune of falling half in love with Clint after just one meeting.

Following his introduction to Bucky, and therefore the demise of his Clintasha hypothesis, Phil spends the next Friday night jealously seething in the corner at a party while Darcy Lewis drapes herself all over Clint’s lap and they share a single red Solo cup. Luckily Steve is at the same party and keeps shooting Phil his most disappointed frown whenever Phil slips into glaring at Darcy’s rather ample cleavage, until finally Phil pulls himself together and sucks it up.

By Monday, he’s found out through the social media grapevine that Clint and Darcy are in fact _not_ a thing, but rather both shameless flirts who often swap clothes for some reason, which at least explains where Clint had gotten those Juicy sweatpants from. Phil had been assuming he’d witnessed a gloating Stride of Pride from some girl’s dorm when they’d met in the coffee shop.

That bit of good news doesn’t bolster his hopes for long, though, because Phil soon learns that Clint does have an on-again, off-again arrangement with Bobbi Morse, which isn’t surprising since just walking past her on campus, Phil can tell that she’s just as much a force of nature as Natasha. When he asks Darcy about it, replenishing her empty margarita glass with a fresh one, she snorts and explains that they mostly just pick fights with each other so they can stew for a few days and then have angry make-up sex because neither one has managed to find a new regular bed partner. Phil’s not certain if that knowledge makes him feel better or worse.

At any rate, the one absolute that Phil has managed to glean from his stint of intel gathering is that Clint is very much of the friends-with-benefits persuasion. Any talk of long-term relationships, no matter who’s the subject, leads to Clint ducking his head to make a face and then doing his utmost to derail the current conversation. (He is, in fact, so adamant about the topic change that he once ended up suckering himself into a losing bet with Natasha over who could throw back more tequila shots. Clint blacked out that night and claims no memory of how he ended up coming to in Stark’s private lab space with his clothes nowhere to be found.)

After that realization, Phil spends a week deep in introspection, trying to determine whether or not he can manage a casual sexual relationship with anyone, let alone Clint, who he already knows he has deeper feelings for. By Sunday, Phil’s of the opinion that he probably can’t, but especially not if Clint’s on the other end of the equation. Except that he’s also aware that if he doesn’t try it out during his college years, he never will, and he’s all for knowing his definite limits. And so Phil decides to go all in with Clint should the chance ever present itself, never mind that it’s his heart that he’s anteing up.

* * *

 

Phil has to give it to Tony Stark—the guy doesn’t bother venturing out of his lab often, but when he does, it’s because he’s gotten it into his head to throw an impromptu yet still widely attended party somewhere on campus.

 

It is a Wednesday night, Phil has a test in the morning, and yet here he is, lurking in a corner of said Stark party at the Fine Arts Gallery where student work is displayed, nursing a cup of lukewarm beer because beer isn’t really his alcohol of choice, but it seems to be the most cost-efficient beverage for large-scale drinking, and thus endlessly popular amongst the college-aged crowd.

 

He’d only forked over the two dollars for a cup because he’d thought Clint might show up, in which case he would require the benefits of some liquid courage to work up the nerve to go over and try and flirt with him.

 

It’s probably a good thing that Clint isn’t present, actually, because Phil’s awkward enough all on his own; adding the social lubrication of booze is destined to end poorly. But now Phil’s stuck with a drink he doesn’t want and no ulterior motive to force it down his throat. He should go ahead and dump it, head back to his room to study, but every now and then the urge to behave irresponsibly strikes Phil, and tonight is such a night, so he hasn’t ducked out yet.

 

Instead, he’s been amusing himself watching Steve across the room. He’s been trying to hit on one guy all night, and it looks to be going about as well for him as it would for Phil. Steve’s back is to him, but that just gives Phil an ideal view of the guy’s reactions to Steve (not to mention the whole back of Steve, which is always a delightful viewpoint, even now that his attentions have changed targets). Steve keeps alternating between shoving his hands deep in his pockets with his shoulders hunched up in an almost bashful fashion, and then, once he recalls that he’s got the body to back up his personality these days, he shifts so that he’s standing straight with his wide chest on proud display.

 

The guy Steve’s talking to, an attractive senior with a ready smile even when he seems to be teasing Steve, has yet to blow Steve off for other prospects. It gives Phil hope that his own poor attempts at flirting will be as well-received one day.

 

Phil’s jostled from behind by the crowd, and his beer sloshes over the edge of the cup, still mostly full. One of the bodies behind him doesn’t move on or back off though, sticking close enough that Phil can feel the residual body heat. He turns cautiously, hoping it’s just someone too trashed to maintain proper balance, and comes face-to-face with Clint, whose unusually serious expression slips away into his regular smirk as he catches Phil’s eye.

 

“So what’s the deal with you and Rogers?” Clint asks without preamble.

 

Phil, still mildly thrown with Clint being right next to him all of a sudden after scouring the party for an hour and finding neither hide nor hair of Clint there, blinks in confusion. “I’m sorry?”

 

Clint scoffs and leans in to knock his shoulder against Phil’s. “Don’t even try’n pretend you haven’t been checking out Captain Hunksalot’s ass the past two minutes, Coulson.”

 

“I wasn’t—what?” Phil sputters.

 

“You so were. Chill, dude. No shame in it.” Clint takes a sip from his own cup, which dangles from his fingertips by the lip. “So?”

 

Phil, forcibly trying to draw his attention away from a stray drop of beer that clings to Clint’s lip before he swipes it away with a flick of his tongue, answers distractedly, “It’s nothing. It’s just—I used to have a crush on him in high school. I guess the staring’s just sort of, uh, habit at this point.”

 

“Used to?” Clint snorts—a habitual reaction when he’s holding back a laugh that Phil can’t help but be charmed by. “Pretty sure you still do.”

 

And how is Phil meant to respond to that? _No, it’s definitely a used-to thing_ , _seeing as you’re the current star of all my daydreams and dream-dreams. And if I’d known your ass was around to ogle, I would have happily found a new vantage point._ Even just thinking it makes Phil want to slap a hand to his face and groan.

 

Phil’s jarred back into the moment by Clint’s hand coming down to roughly pat him on the shoulder. “Phil, man, what are you waiting for? Go make your move before it’s too late.”

 

Phil’s so startled that he nearly drops his cup; as it is, another glop of beer escapes over the rim and slowly seeps into the cuff of his sleeve. “What!?”

 

“Go get your flirt on! You’ve been here how long? You gotta be past the tipsy stage by now. If things get awkward, just blame it on the booze.”

 

And then Phil abruptly comes to two realizations: one, Clint is under the impression that he is drunk, which isn’t an odd assumption to make seeing as he’s at a keg party; two, Clint seems to think that Phil is on the prowl for _Steve_ of all people. Of course, then Phil catches up with the conversation enough to get that Clint is trying to give him a _pep-talk._ For approaching Steve.

 

What even is his life anymore?

 

“No.” Phil accompanies his rather firm denial with an emphatic headshake, just for good measure. “No, definitely not.”

 

But Clint keeps needling at him, his shoulder pressed to Phil’s and steadily inching him in Steve’s direction. “Your window’s closing fast over there, Coulson. You gotta get in there before he seals the deal with Tall, Dark and Handsome.”

 

“Really, Clint. I’m good right here.” _With you._

 

“Come on, what’s the worst that can happen? He turns you down?”

 

“Uh, no.” Phil lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “He’s been drinking too. He could say _yes_.”

 

Clint rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “Yeah, that’s kinda the point, man.”

 

On the one hand, Phil wants to extract himself from all the awkward that’s quickly descending, but on the other, he really doesn’t want to move away when Clint’s pressed up against his side. “I can’t—I don’t—”

 

And of course, because the universe is constantly looking to troll Phil, Clint mistakes his evasive flailing for another issue with the situation altogether. “Phil,” Clint’s voice drops low and serious as he slings his arm over Phil’s shoulders. “I’m gonna ask you something. Not judging, just asking. How far have you ever actually gotten with someone? Like, sex-wise?”

 

Caught by surprise, it takes Phil a moment to jump tracks and catch up to what Clint’s saying. “What, like in baseball terminology?”

 

“Sure, yeah, that’s a good way to simplify it.”

 

Honestly stumped, Phil takes a good minute to seriously think it over; the results he recalls are not promising. “Are foul balls still a thing in that analogy?”

 

“Foul—?” Clint splutters and his head whips around so that he can gape at Phil. “Holy fuck, dude. Okay, no, you’re right. Can’t send you over to Rogers for your first time out.”

 

Then Clint pivots abruptly and hooks his hand into the crook of Phil’s elbow, dragging him out to the hall before pulling him into a little nook beside the entrance to the stairwell. He spins back around and moves his grip up to Phil’s shoulders, leaning in to look him straight in the eyes. “You gotta practice first. Warm up. So you’re ready when it’s time to step up to the big leagues,” Clint insists.

 

“Okay?” And it’s a question, definitely a question, because Phil has kind of lost the plot at this point.

 

“Okay. Cool.” Clint nods, mostly to himself, and his weight shifts back so that he’s lounging back against the wall. The stern set of his mouth relaxes and his usual smirk, that Phil knows so very well at this point, steals over his face as he says, “Get over here. We’re gonna start with some good, old-fashioned frenching.”

 

With startling clarity, Phil realizes that this, this is _the_ opportunity, this is the moment that Captain Jack Sparrow warned him about. And Phil, well, he’s not at all drunk enough for this, but he _is_ just desperate enough for Clint’s attention to think it is an _excellent_ idea.

 

Which is how Phil ends up on the floor in a corner of the Fine Arts building, sitting in Clint Barton’s lap with a tongue expertly sliding against his own and a wide hand curved securely around his hip, Clint’s fingers hooked into his belt loop pulling his jeans down just enough that Clint can rub his thumb over the smooth skin just above Phil’s ass. In that moment, he convinces himself that adding casual sex to his burgeoning relationship with Clint is definitely the way to go.


	3. Chapter 3

**NOW**

 

It’s safe to say that Clint’s not handling his current situation well, so he’s not all too surprised when his R.A. comes a-knocking Friday night and refuses to leave him alone until he comes to the door. But yeah, he’s been skipping classes, which is so unlike him that he’s actually kinda shocked it’s taken Sam this long to come and check on him.

 

By lunchtime on Monday, he’d already been sick to his stomach with guilt about missing a class, so he’d emailed his profs to tell them he was sick, even though they probably wouldn’t even notice he wasn’t there. The lying about why he wasn’t attending class just ended up making him feel worse, though.

 

He was well aware that his athletic scholarship balanced precariously at the edge of the academia cliff, so he’d made an effort to attend class on Tuesday. Well, at least until he tried to get dressed and leave his dorm, since that was right around the time he had to face facts that if he stepped outside, he was more than likely to at least see Phil in passing.

 

It wasn’t so much that the thought gave him the cold sweats, as it filled him with this incomparable dread. He just wasn’t ready to face the music yet, okay? But he would be. By this Monday, definitely. He’d totally have it under control then.

 

And so Clint resigns himself to slumping off the bed, wrapped up in his comforter, and opening the door just enough to poke his head out, prepared to quickly reassure his R.A. and get him to fuck off so Clint’s designated wallowing time doesn’t suffer a catastrophic setback.

 

“I’m not sick,” he grouses, his voice hoarse from disuse. “You can go away now.”

 

Sam just eyes him, not in a judging way or anything, which is something Clint’s always liked about Sam, and then pushes his way into the room. He pulls out the desk chair and makes himself comfortable, waving Clint back over to his bed.

 

“So tell me what happened. You and Coulson have a fight?” Sam asks.

 

“No!” Clint snaps out defensively, hunching his shoulders so that his blanket comes up around his head, a safe little cocoon to keep the rest of the world out. “What would that even have to do with anything?” Him and Coulson aren’t even dating. His fucking R.A. should not be in here pumping him for info on some kind of _lover’s tiff_.

 

“Just FYI, you two are not subtle,” Sam says, cutting straight to the chase. “Or quiet. And sound-proofing was not a thing when these dorms were originally built.”

 

“Ugh, whatever.” Clint scrunches his face up at the implication that Sam’s heard what he and Phil have been up to in here the past few months. “We didn’t have a fucking fight.”

 

Sam shrugs, idly swiveling the chair back and forth with his feet firmly planted so that his attention never wavers from Clint. “You sure about that? ‘Cause it looks an awful lot like you’ve been avoiding him. He found me in the dining hall the other day and asked if you’d gone home for something, which I took to mean he wasn’t aware you’ve just been hiding in your room all week.”

 

“I’m not hiding,” Clint insists.

 

Sam hums, and it almost sounds like an agreement, except that then he says, “Yeah, well, right at this moment, you’ve got a blanket pulled over your head.”

 

“That’s just ‘cause _you’re_ here, and I look like shit right now,” Clint mutters as he scoots back on his bed so that his back is in the corner.

 

“Not to rain on your parade or anything, but the blanket isn’t doing a whole lot to help that situation.”

 

“Oh, fuck you,” Clint scoffs. He’d throw something at Sam if there was anything in easy reach. Technically, there’s his pillow, but he doubts chucking it at his R.A. is going to help with the dignity issue he’s currently having.

 

“Hey, now. Don’t go getting on my bad side,” Sam warns, a definite undercurrent of amusement in his tone and the hint of a teasing smile twitching at the edge of his mouth. “I can just as easily arrange a mandatory remediation session for you two as I can sit here and talk to you direct.”

 

“Dude! You can’t make us do remediation to talk about our _feelings_ ,” Clint snaps indignantly.

 

“Wanna bet?” Sam crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow in challenge. Unfortunately, Clint’s too exhausted from doing shit-all the week to rise to it. Sam deflates a second later and says, "Or you can just talk to me.”

 

Clint flips the edge of his comforter up and over his head so he at least doesn’t have to look at Sam—and more importantly, not see the looks Sam is bound to give him—if the guy’s not gonna fuck off until he gets the whole story out of Clint. “ _I told you_. We didn’t have a fight, okay?”

 

“Alright. So what happened, then?”

 

Clint doesn’t answer right away. He stews, teeth clenched together to hold the pathetic words in until his jaw starts to ache with it, but still Sam just sits there and waits. Clint finally bites out, “He went on a date with another guy.”

 

“Seriously?” Sam at least sounds baffled at the very idea, not like it was a forgone conclusion that Phil would find someone loads better for him and jump at the opportunity to tap that, which is nice in a way.

 

“I saw them at the coffee shop last week.” And how shitty is it that he can’t even keep the resignation, the disappointment out of his voice?

 

“And you haven’t talked to him since.” Clint shakes his head in the negative. Sam hums in contemplation for a sec then continues, “You sure it was a date? Not just two friends talking over a latte?”

 

Oh, if only. “Phil’s been half in love with Rogers since forever. He wasn’t sitting there for some platonic shit.”

 

“Steve Rogers?” Clint nods, then remembers he’s buried under his blanket and Sam can’t actually see him, but apparently R.A.’s get some kind of training in the art of reticent resident communication because he gets it anyway. All he says though is, “Huh.”

 

But that’s really all the opening Clint needs to finally get it all off his chest, all the useless one-sided competition and hope that he could convince Phil that he’s a viable candidate too. It all spills out, right there in the pigsty of his room, until he eventually winds down with, “But yeah, it’s like, anytime I think we’re maybe on the track to being a thing? Bam. Rogers walks by and Phil can’t shut up about how goddamn dreamy he is.”

 

“He’s kinda the whole dreamy package, yeah,” Sam easily commiserates. “Well, outside of the major issues with authority deal, but then I guess that gives him a bit of a bad boy flair to off-set the All-American look.”

 

“Right? And now he’s going on coffee dates with him, so that, you know, knocks me out of the running.” Clint bends at the waist and drops his head down onto his knee. “Ugh! I hate this. I _like_ Rogers—Steve. He’s awesome. We’re pals. At least, I think we are, or, like, we could be, if we hung out more. But whenever he’s anywhere near Phil, I just—”

 

The plastic wheels of his rickety chair scratch across the tiles as Sam scoots over so he’s close enough to clap Clint on the shoulder. “Hey, I get it, man. Jealousy’ll turn you into an ugly monster if you let it, and you don’t want that. But if it helps? I’m like 99.99% positive it wasn’t a date.”

 

“You think?”

 

“Yeah, Steve’s seeing somebody.”

 

“He is?” Clint’s voice cracks because he’s so desperately hoping that that’s the case, and how sad is that?

 

“Yup. It’s pretty serious, too,” Sam assures him. “Granted, there is that 0.01% chance, but damn, that’d be a pretty shitty way to find out he’s not as committed to me as I am to him, you know?”

 

“Shit!” Clint flails, torn between moving back, away from the edge of the shit-creek he’s just stumbled upon, or leaning closer to attempt some kind of comforting technique, though mostly all he’s got up his sleeve are stoic arm punches or overly clingy hugs. “You—you and Steve? Ah, fuck. Shit—I’m so sorry, man—”

 

But Sam cuts through all his bullshit indecision with a firm, “Chill, Barton. What I’m saying is, I totally get where you’re coming from, but I’m here to remind you that Steve ain’t like that, and from all I know about Coulson, he ain’t either. Have a little faith in your man.”

 

And sure, yeah, Clint would really like to just buy in to everything Sam’s laying down, but he still gets stuck on one crucial fact. “He’s not mine,” Clint mutters dejectedly.

 

“You sure about that?” Sam stares him down for a good minute, then his hands drop to his knees and he pushes himself up out of the chair. “How about instead of just jumping to all these conclusions that have got you skipping class and laying in bed all day, you go straight to the source and find out exactly what’s up?”

 

Clint flops over on to his side as Sam heads for the door. “Boo. Why do you have to talk all sensible and make me sound like some immature kid?”

 

Sam flashes him a cheeky grin over his shoulder before delivering his parting shot: “That’s what they pay me minimum wage for.”

 

* * *

 

**THEN**

 

Phil wakes up the morning after that fateful party ten minutes before his alarm is set to go off. He isn’t hungover because he barely had anything to drink. He’s decent, even under the bed sheets, since he changed into his pajamas after he stumbled back to his dorm room. There’s no human-shaped lump next to him in his bed, but then, why would there be? He and Clint parted very amicably the night before, with a parting kiss (that turned into quite a few more) and everything.

 

Still, the feeling squirming around low in his gut—half anticipation and half mortification—leaves Phil wondering if this is what it’s always like, the infamous Morning After he’s heard so much about in popular culture.

 

He rolls over to snag his cell off of his desk corner where he left it charging and quickly thumbs his way over to Clint’s contact details. Is this the part where he texts Clint to see if he remembers last night? Or is it too soon? Probably, it’s not even eight yet. Maybe Clint’ll text him? He’s certainly more well-versed in the after-actions for this sort of situation.

 

Phil’s stomach clenches, feeling like it’s rolling in on itself. He’s unsure whether that’s due to butterflies or hunger.

 

The latter is easily taken care of, though, so Phil gets out of bed and throws on a pair a jeans before making his way to the cafeteria, clenching his phone in his hand rather than stuffing it in his pocket so he doesn’t somehow miss a text notification.

 

But other than an event reminder he set up for an appointment with his advisor, Phil’s phone remains silent the rest of the day.

 

* * *

 

“Is there some kind of party hook-up protocol that I’m not privy too?” Phil mutters dejectedly into his Calc book.

 

Across the table from him, Maria sighs the sigh of the eternally beleaguered, which is only to be expected seeing as they met up at the patio overlooking the lawn to work through problem sets together, but Phil’s spent the past half hour bemoaning his dismal social life.

 

“First off,” Maria bites out, glaring up through her lashes at him since she can’t even be bothered to lift her head to deal with him anymore, “Some drunken fumbling in a dark corner doesn’t qualify as a hook-up; an orgasm needs to be involved in there somewhere. Second, no, you dork, there is no established protocol for how to deal with a guy you made out with while drunk.”

 

Phil drags the eraser end of his pencil back and forth along the crease in his textbook and grumbles, “I wasn’t drunk.”

 

“No, he just thought you were.”

 

“Exactly!” Phil exclaims, throwing his pencil down before burying his hands in his hair. “Shouldn’t we have some kind of awkward run-in where we bumble our way through a conversation to try and find out how much we both remember?”

 

Maria groans. “Please, for the love of all that is holy, stop getting relationship advice from poorly rated rom-coms.”

 

Phil drops his arms back down to his sides with a huff. “In my defence, I am trying to get advice from _you_ , but you’re being horrible unhelpful.”

 

“Fine.” Maria breathes sharply through her nose and then levels a stern look--and a pointed finger--at Phil. “But only because this bullshit has got you so distracted that you didn’t even notice that your boy is part of the yoga class that the majority of the students out here are ogling.”

 

“What?” Phil scrambles around in his chair, which screeches harshly along the bricks, so he can look out across the lawn. And what do you know? Front and center of the group working through yoga stretches is Clint. He’s decked out in loose gym shorts and a tank top, and as he fluidly switches between positions, his clothes bunch and resettle, leaving tantalizing strips of tanned skin on display. Phil is a big enough person to admit that he doesn’t just stare at Clint then, he eagerly drinks in the sight of him, desperately trying to capture the image of Clint’s muscles flexing in the afternoon sunlight so that he can store it in his mind forever, like a well-thumbed photograph.

 

The slam of Maria’s textbook closing finally pulls Phil’s attention back to their table. “Look, I’ve got class, so I’m going to keep this short and sweet,” she says, leaning forward with her elbows planted on the table. “And my infinite wisdom on the subject? Says to take the straight approach and just ask him if he wants to do it again.”

 

“But what if he says no?”

 

Maria rolls her eyes. “Then you’ll always have Paris.”

 

“Not helping,” Phil gripes.

 

Maria shrugs then gets up to pack her things away in her bag. Phil’s gaze strays back over to the far side of the lawn where Clint is now bending forward, his head nearly touching his knees, the fabric of his shorts pulled taut over his ass. Phil gulps and fails to tear his eyes away when Maria announces she’s leaving.

 

“Whatever.” Maria claps him on the shoulder as she passes him. “Good luck hiding that massive boner. Congrats on that, by the way. Clint’s a very lucky guy.”

 

Lost as he is to the rest of the world as Clint lays down on his front only to push his upper body back up, leaving his back bowed at an impressive angle, Phil doesn’t actually manage to process Maria’s parting quip until she’s already long gone. Then, of course, he becomes abruptly aware of how his dick is straining against the confines of his jeans.

 

A blush rushes to his face so quickly he’s lightheaded for a moment, and he can feel the heat his cheeks are giving off. Abashed like never before--because seriously, he is smack dab in the middle of public space, literally surrounded by his peers, and his body betrays his thoughts like this?--Phil shuffles around his schoolwork on the tabletop until he can slide his textbook into his lap as inconspicuously as possible.

 

He can’t risk standing up right now to make a hasty retreat since, as Maria ever so helpfully pointed out, his package is rather sizable, and therefore fairly noticeable when he’s worked up in such a state. Phil wants nothing more than to lock himself away in his dorm room and hide from this humiliation under his pillow, which is of course when the yoga class draws to a close, the participants rolling up their mats as they begin to disperse, and Clint spots Phil as soon as he turns around.

 

This is not at all the post-make out meeting Phil envisioned, by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, Clint bounds over to his table with a friendly grin, his tank top sticking to his abs as it comes in contact with the faint sheen of sweat coating his body. Clint throws himself into Maria’s abandoned seat, and Phil’s cock gives a traitorous twitch.

 

“Phil! Hey, man, you okay?” Clint greets, his grin dimming as he gets a closer look at Phil, and he has no doubt that he must look all kinds of uncomfortable right about now.

 

“Uh, fine,” Phil replies hoarsely, pressing his textbook down firmly.

 

Clint braces his forearms on the table and leans forward, and Phil really wishes he wouldn’t do that because his predicament is bound to be noticed by anyone bothering to look. “Really? ‘Cause you look kinda like—oh.” Clint is, as ever, overly observant at the worst possible moment. “Oh. What brought this on?” Clint asks, his tone shifting from concerned to teasing.

 

Panicking, Phil’s eyes dart around the lawn looking for some kind—really any kind—of explanation, his mouth working silently as he flounders.

 

His salvation, much like his damnation, is facilitated by Clint. “Oh sweet Lordy,” Clint mutters, whistling low as he looks past Phil’s shoulder. “It’s like his damn muscles have more muscles.”

 

Confused, Phil looks over to follow Clint’s gaping gaze, and sure enough, there’s Steve, in all his bare-chested glory, playing what seems to be a pickup football game with Bucky and some other vaguely familiar faces. What the hell are the chances of an excuse that perfect falling right into Phil’s (straining) lap? Though, maybe for once the universe is attempting to cut him some slack. Phil turns back to Clint and doesn’t bother to tamp down on his embarrassment, leaving Clint to make of it what he will.

 

Clint’s expression falls slack for a second as Phil watches him, but then his full focus is back on Phil and he’s leering. “Coulson, you dog, you. Were you over here fantasizing about gettin’ hot and heavy with Rogers? Isn’t that the kind of thing you should be saving for the privacy of a shower stall?”

 

Impossibly, Phil’s face feels like it’s turning ever redder. Between the rush down South and the blush up top, Phil starts to feel woozy, and he sways back in his seat.

 

The scratch of a chair sliding over on the patio jerks Phil back into the moment, and Clint’s suddenly a whole lot closer than he was. “Dude, don’t panic,” he instructs levely.

 

Phil chuckles breathlessly. “And always know where your towel is?”

 

“Bet you’re wishing you had one now though, right?” Clint’s eyebrow is cocked, and really, that’s too good a look on him for Phil to handle just now. Under the table, Clint’s knee nudges up against Phil’s. “Hey, we’re both guys. We know how this works. Sometimes the damn thing’s just got a mind of it’s own. Just cool your jets. What’s your ice bucket?”

 

“My what?”

 

“What do think about to ward off the sexy thoughts?” Clint clarifies, waving a hand in front of him as if to demonstrate.

 

“ _What_?” Phil hisses incredulously.

 

“Don’t even front with me, Coulson,” Clint scoffs. “It’s a tried and true method that every teenage boy adopts for his own good. I usually go for a kind of mediation thing, but that’s a trick I learned for shooting, so I don’t think it’s gonna help you right now. What’s your go-to?”

 

“I don’t _have_ a go-to.” When Clint just looks back at him disbelievingly, Phil elaborates. “This is not a common occurrence.”

 

“Really? Well, aren’t you just all kinds of precious?” Clint’s tone has a far-off quality to it, like he’s talking more to himself than Phil. But between one blink and the next, he’s right back with Phil, his laser focus jumping up a notch as he asks, “You doing anything tonight?”

 

“Just classes, why?” Phil tries to lean back to get a bit of distance between them, but there’s nowhere to go.

 

“You wanna meet up at my dorm later? I’ll walk you through Boner Management 101.” Clint lays out the invitation with an expression that Phil has come to term the _come hither_ look from witnessing it so often in movies.

 

Phil has to lick his suddenly bone-dry lips. “Yeah, and what’s that?”

 

Clint moves back, his shoulders rolling in an easy shrug as he says, “Well, personally, I’ve found that a healthy sex life does wonders for preventing inappropriate boner-popping.”

 

And what the hell is Phil’s life anymore that Clint Barton is propositioning him in broad daylight with dozens of witnesses around, not that any of them are paying their table any mind, in the interest of taming his hormonal reactions to Steve (but really Clint)?

 

When Phil takes too long to reply, Clint hastily backtracks, and the sudden lack of confidence doesn’t fit Clint at all. “Ah, too forward?”

 

Phil is shaking his head emphatically before he can think better of it, and then he’s blurting out, “My class gets out at 6:50.”

 

Grinning once more, Clint pushes out of his chair with a chirped, “It’s a date. In the meantime, try thinking about saggy, hairy ball sacks.”

 

Phil pulls an immediate face at that mental image, and Clint walks away, cackling madly.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**NOW**

 

Clint at least has the presence of mind to take a shower before embarking on his quest to Fix Things With Phil. Well, that and it’s a pretty good delaying tactic.

 

So he showers. He brushes his teeth. And at that point, he figures he should go ahead and shave. Of course, then he has to do laundry because it’s not like he has anything that’s actually clean, except for some yoga pants that he’s not entirely sure who he borrowed from, which could work—‘cause, _hello_ , they make his ass look fly—but then he decides best not to show up wearing someone else’s clothes. Unless they’re Phil’s. At which point he realizes that he doesn’t have anything of Phil’s other than that one hoodie, and that needs to be washed too since it smells like his closet now, and his closet, stuffed as it is with all the stuff he’s forgotten about cleaning, is no spring meadow.

 

All in all, he nearly manages to waste the entire day—a Saturday, at least, so he’s not missing a class while he procrastinates—just _preparing_ to go talk to Phil, but then Sam stops back by his room after dinner and stands in his doorway just fucking _looking_ at him until Clint gets off his ass and walks out of the dorm.

 

By the time he makes it to the quad, he seriously considers just walking off campus to the nearest Starbucks and hiding out there for a reasonable amount of time, but really, he’s just making himself miserable at this point, so he decides to suck it up and get on with it already.

 

First things first: gotta find Phil. He plops down on the nearest bench and pulls out his phone, flipping it end over end while he debates his next move. It’s after dinner time, and the weekend at that, so there’s really no telling where Phil might be. He could text Phil, just something short and sweet asking what he’s up to, but with his luck, Phil will just ignore it to get back at him for dropping off the map all week.

 

Sighing, he swipes through the lock screen on his phone and flicks over to his home screen, frowning at all the notifications for his email and text messages and social media sites. He pulls up Facebook, since for some reason, people at this school think it’s a good idea to plan shit on there, even if it’s just to meet up for a group project. There’s the usual weekend party info, already some questionable status updates on his feed, but then there’s actual gold: miracle or miracles, Phil actually updated his status about an hour ago.

 

_Have I done something to anger the Essay Gods? Three due by Weds. Please pray for me._

 

Papers to write means Phil’s in the library because he’s a giant dork who’s always insisting that a separation of study-space and living-space is conducive to maintaining a productive work ethic and regular sleep schedule. Clint’s a little bit peeved that he remembers all that, and the theory behind it, but mostly it just gives him warm fuzzies inside to think about how serious Phil had looked when he’d been explaining it to him.

 

Clint pushes up off the bench and turns in the direction of the library, loath as he is to step foot in such a place on a Saturday night.

 

The library’s even more quiet than usual, the few students lurking in the corners either the extremely studious or the truly desperate. Clint heads for the third floor where there’re little study nooks made by the dormer windows. Phil prefers to set up at the one on the end, where there’s a battered couch nearby for when he needs to pass out for a power nap.

 

Clint’s stomach starts to turn the closer to the third floor he gets, and with each step, he keeps changing his mind about whether it’s from nervous-happy-butterflies or worrying-sinking-rocks.

 

He pauses once he hits the landing, allowing himself one more minute to stall, and then he opens the door and stalks through the stacks.

 

Sure enough, Phil is there, on his couch even. But he’s not alone.

 

Steve is sitting next him, their knees each up on a cushion so they can face each other while they talk, and their heads are bent close together, probably so they can whisper without disturbing anyone else, though it doesn’t look to Clint like there’s anyone else on the floor.

 

Steve’s got a textbook open, balanced on his lap, and his finger is slowly sliding across the page like he’s reading from it. And Phil’s just sitting there, watching Steve.

 

And then, of course, the reality of the situation hits Clint. Yes, okay, Steve is apparently with Sam and he’s sure they’re plenty happy together and that Steve isn’t looking to stray or whatever. But just because Steve’s involved with someone, doesn’t mean that Phil’s any less in love with the guy. Unrequited feelings are a definite thing, and even if they stay unrequited, it doesn’t make them magically go away.

 

Clint should know; he’s had a recent, intense crash-course in the phenomenon, after all.

 

He backs up down the aisle on silent feet, careful to dodge around the book cart behind him, and slips back out of the library.

 

* * *

 

**THEN**

 

Phil can’t figure out where to put his hands. Clint’s shoulders? Absolutely not. It’s too awkward, like they’re at a middle school dance standing at arms-length to leave room for Jesus. Maybe his hips? No, that seems a bit presumptuous. Although, is it really? They’re meant to be having sex now, aren’t they? How about his waist, then? That sounds like a safe middle ground.

 

Phil reaches out hesitantly, but his fingers seem to be in a constant state of ABORT MISSION, twitching back and away every time he gets them close to grazing some part of Clint. “This all seems so much sexier in porn,” Phil complains to Clint’s chest, his beautifully defined pectorals stretching the confines of his t-shirt.

Clint snorts. “Okay, first rule of sex: never, ever _try_ to be sexy,” he instructs, taking Phil’s hands in his own and drawing them around his body until he has Phil’s palms solidly planted on the globes of his denim-clad ass, their chests nearly pressed together. “Quickest way to fail at being sexy? Overthinking the sexy.”

Phil’s grip flexes involuntarily, testing the give of the muscles, before he forcibly jerks them up to rest at the small of Clint’s back. It’s possible he squeaks somewhere in the interim, but that could have just as easily been the rusty hinges on the dorm door across the hall.

Clint doesn’t try to move Phil’s hands again. Instead, he dips his head so that his lips can trail lightly over the cords of Phil’s neck, peppering faint kisses and soft bites around his pulse point. Phil moans and tries to step impossibly closer, just wanting to melt into the sensation and ignore all the extraneous bits.

Except that he can’t, because his mind is racing, the little hamster wheel generating smoke it’s going so fast. Shouldn’t he be doing something besides just standing here? Or is necking one of those wait-your-turn things? Caught up in trying to ascertain the standard operating procedure, it takes Phil a fair bit to notice that his hands have slipped back down over the swell of Clint’s ass without any input from his brain.

“How do you even do that?” Phil asks, huffing out a breathless laugh as Clint’s warm breath ghosts over sensitive skin.

Clint pulls back after one more pecking kiss, his mouth caught in some odd in-between expression, like he’s trying to frown in concentration and smile in reassurance at the same time.“Look,” he starts to explain. “You ever get super conscious of the fact that someone you like is watching you walk away? So you try to put some swagger on it, draw attention to your ass?”

“No?”

“You totally have,” Clint scoffs, hands dropping down to Phil’s belt buckle and flicking it out of the loops efficiently as he keeps talking. “Probably for _Steve._ And I can promise you, you didn’t do yourself any favors.”

Phil huffs out an indignant sigh. “Alright then, Love Guru. What am I supposed to do?”

“Second rule of sex!” Clint crows with a wide grin. “It’s meant to be fun. So if you’re not having fun, take a step back and reassess.”

Phil’s belt clatters to the floor, but Clint’s hands stay where they are, moving on to the button and zipper of his jeans. Every move Clint makes is confident and sure, and Phil’s almost too mesmerized by the sight to keep up with their conversation. There’s a rather lengthy pause between Clint’s rule and Phil’s bemused reply. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

 

“Totally does,” Clint insists, fingers creeping under the waistbands of Phil’s boxers and jeans so that he can shuck them down over Phil’s hips all in one go. And then, all of a sudden, Phil’s half-naked, standing in front of Clint. But Clint’s eyes don’t leave his face, giving Phil a clear view of how his pupils are slowly widening, inky black blanketing over the usual myriad of colors that fleck Clint’s irises.

 

Phil gulps audibly, and he can feel his face heating up. “So just…have fun?”

 

“Yup.” Clint’s hands find his again, and he slowly slides them around his waist until they’re hovering over Clint’s clothed crotch.

 

“And that’ll keep things sexy?” Phil asks uncertainly. He hesitates to actually unbutton Clint’s jeans, mostly because he’s sure his hands are shaking too much to actually manage the task.

 

Clint makes a noise in the back of his throat and tilts his head back and forth. “Yes and no.”

 

Phil’s fingers hook over the waistband of Clint’s jeans as he groans out, “Seriously? Are you just feeding me a bunch of bullshit here?”

 

Phil catches the quick flash of a smile before Clint darts in and kisses him. Phil’s mouth drops open, eager to invite Clint’s tongue inside, but instead, Clint sucks Phil’s lower lip between his own, teasing at it with the faintest scratch of teeth. He pulls back as abruptly as he dove in, and Phil is left reeling.

 

“You know when someone’s really caught up in a thing that makes them happy, and their smile is completely unguarded?” Clint asks. He’s brought up one hand so that his pointer finger can trace around the edge of Phil’s lips.

 

“Sure,” Phil answers distractedly, wondering if he’s allowed to lick that finger, to pull it into his mouth and toy with it to see what kind of reaction it’ll garner from Clint.

 

Suddenly, Clint’s eyes are pinning him in place, much too serious for the fun he keeps insisting on. “You ever think they were more beautiful than in that moment?”

 

“Well, uh—” Phil stutters as his hands reflexively ball into fists and grip Clint’s jeans tightly.

 

Then Clint shrugs and his expression is back to being light and easy, and Phil can breath again. “So keep it fun. When you’re having fun with the sex stuff, it’s obvious and it’s amazing. Real life is not a porno. Shit’s gonna happen. At some point, one of you is gonna fart at the most unfortunate moment—”

 

“This just sounds humiliating—”

 

“But if you stay out of your head and just let all the giddy feelings run wild, then you can just laugh it off and the mood’ll fix itself.”

 

“I think I’ve changed my mind,” Phil whines, and he drops his head down to rest on Clint’s shoulder.

 

Clint shifts against him so that one leg moves in to part Phil’s thighs, and then there’s just delicious pressure nudging along his semi. “Well, your dick sure hasn’t. Let’s get down to business, stud muffin.”

 

“Stud— _what_?” Phil splutters, lifting his head to boggle incredulously at Clint.

 

“So that’s a no-go on stud muffin.” Clint hums thoughtfully to himself. “How about Pookie bear? Snookums? _Bae_?”

 

“None of the above.” The groan that follows this pronouncement serves a dual-purpose, both to better communicate his complete and utter exacerbation with Clint’s antics, and to express how good the light drag of denim on his cock feels.

 

“Don’t worry, we’ll find you one,” Clint insists. He leans back far enough that he can pry Phil’s t-shirt away from where it’s trapped between them and easily divests Phil of the last of his clothes. “And in case you were wondering, I answer to ‘Oh, God. Oh, fuck. Harder please!’”

 

Phil shakes his head. “I can’t take you seriously like this.”

 

“Kinda the point here, Phil,” Clint says with a knowing smirk, and when he moves back in close to Phil so that they’re pressed together from thigh to shoulder, Phil is made aware of the complete lack of barriers separating their groins. He glances down at the floor, and sure enough, Clint’s jeans have joined his own in a crumpled pile. Did he do that? He doesn’t remember doing that.

 

Blinking in confusion, Phil returns his focus to Clint. “Rule two?”

 

“Rule two,” Clint parrots back.

 

Nodding decisively, Phil places his hands on Clint’s hips, the bare skin warm and inviting. “So what’s rule three?”

 

Clint tsks and begins walking Phil backwards until his legs bump against the frame of Clint’s extra-long twin bed. “You’re not ready for three yet, young padawan.”

 

Traitorously, Phil’s cock pulses, filling out along the hard line of muscle that is Clint’s body.

 

“Wait. Waitwaitwait. _Really_?” Clint’s eyes sparkle with clear mischief as he cups Phil’s face between his hands and plants a smacking kiss on his lips. “Oh, we are going to have so much fun together. You just get on the bed and lie there. Let me talk nerdy to you.”

 

* * *

 

Sex with Clint is—well. Phil thinks it’s pretty fucking awesome, but then, his meter of comparison only goes from _no sex_ to _furtive masturbation behind closed doors_ to _sex with Clint._

 

It’s messy and sweaty and more than a little bit embarrassing. But there’s something mind-blowingly amazing about having someone else’s hand stroking over his cock, something curious and intriguing about getting to wrap his hand around someone else’s to catalogue all the differences in weight and texture.

 

Phil is firmly of the belief that, at the very least, adding Clint’s hand into the mix provides a much more satisfying orgasm than just Phil’s alone ever has.

 

Relaxed and blissed out and panting into the small hollow made by Clint’s collarbone, Phil has no filter left to hold back anything embarrassing he might say. So when he thinks of how nice Clint’s mouth on his cock could be, because he has heard many good things about blowjobs in general and personally thought many explicitly good things about Clint’s mouth in particular, he immediately tells Clint so.

 

Clint laughingly agrees and wraps his arm snug around Phil’s waist, keeping their chests pressed together even though they’re sweating from their combined body heat.

 

In a distant part of the back of his mind, Phil recalls thinking that this will all end very badly, but here, in this perfect, sex-hazed moment, he can’t bring himself to regret a thing.


	5. Chapter 5

**NOW**

Phil should be listening to Steve outlining the research he did last night for their history project, but instead he’s pushing the veggies on his plate around listlessly with his fork, eyes darting from the pile of peas to his blank phone screen every few seconds before he drags them back. He doesn’t even like vegetables all that much, but he’s been eating so much junk food lately—eating his feelings, Maria had pointed out earlier with an oddly sympathetic look—that he felt guilty for ignoring his mother’s strict nutritional guidelines that’d been grilled into him at a very young age.

 

He mashes his fork down on the peak of the pea pile, sending little green pods rolling everywhere. His phone remains silent.

 

Steve’s voice breaks off suddenly, and Phil only really notices because it’s been like a constant drone in his ear, though he hasn’t really been hearing the words. Then a tray is dropped down at their table, sending the salt and pepper shakers wobbling, and Steve’s boyfriend joins them with a disgruntled huff. “Okay, seriously. This shit is getting out of control,” Sam complains, glaring across the table at Phil, who can only stare back in wide-eyed confusion.

 

“Uh, you okay there, babe?” Steve hazards to ask, knocking his shoulder against Sam’s, but Sam’s focus stays lasered in on Phil.

 

“Coulson, I am going to ask you a question,” Sam says, his voice low and serious. “A very important question, and I need you to be upfront with me here.”

 

“O-kay?” Phil replies. He looks over to Steve a bit desperately, but Steve only shrugs back, looking just as clueless as Phil feels right now.

 

“Because while I recognize that the dude’s got a flair for the dramatic, this is taking it way too far even for him,” Sam continues. He pauses and raises his eyebrows pointedly, like he’s waiting to make sure he has Phil’s full, undivided attention.

 

Which he does, mainly because Phil has no idea where Sam is going with this. “I’m not following.”

 

Sam sighs expressively, his whole body getting in on the action, his shoulders rising and then dropping sharply. “Is there a reason your boyfriend’s convinced that you’re in love with mine?” he asks point-blank.

 

“Uh…” Phil knows the blood is draining away from his face rapidly because it leaves him a little lightheaded. “W-well, you see, it’s not what you—he’s not actually my boyfriend—” he stutters out.

 

Sam cuts through his bumbling attempt at deflection with a decisive, “What did you do, Coulson?”

 

Phil’s head falls forward onto to the table with a painful _plunk_. “In my defense,” he whines into the plastic tablecloth, “It made a lot of sense at the time.”

 

Phil hears Sam groan, and then he mutters, “This is starting to sound like something I don’t actually want toknow about.”

“Oh, I gotta hear this,” Steve finally chimes in, sounding like he’s grinning, which, given the fact that he’s a not-so-little shit, he no doubt is. “Phil’s always had a big head and little arms.”

 

Phil looks up with the intention of glaring at Steve and manages to catch Sam slapping him upside the head. “The peanut gallery has no room to talk.”

 

“I’d say he’s a dirty liar who lies, but in this instance, it’s probably true,” Phil grumbles, frowning down at his plate of untouched food. His stomach rolls and an aftertaste like bile sits in the back of his throat, so he pushes it away to the very edge of the table.

 

“Are we at the part where you explain things yet?” Sam grouses, taking up his silverware and finally starting in on his own dinner. “‘Cause I’ve got a resident who’s locked up in his dorm wallowing in all types of misery, and outside of the fact that I’m being paid pretty poorly to deal with this shit, he’s also a friend, so I’m legit invested here.”

 

“Clint—he, uh,” Phil breaks off for a second, cringing as he forces himself to continue, “He offered to help me."

 

“With?” Sam prods, crunching on the carrots in his salad.

  
  
Phil’s voice sounds like a squeaky mouse’s, even to his own ears, when he eventually pipes up with, “Seducing Steve?”

  
  
Were it any other day, and were Phil not the one under interrogation, he would have fallen out of his chair laughing at Steve’s immediate spit-take. “What? _Why?_ ” he splutters. __  
  


Phil starts picking at a crusty stain on the tablecloth with his thumbnail so that he has an excuse to avoid eye contact. “He may have, uh, made an assumption at the start of our acquaintance that I never bothered to actually correct.”

 

“Why the hell would he assume you were trying to get into my pants?” Steve exclaims.

****  
  
“More and more shit I didn't wanna know,” Sam mutters, shaking his head in exasperation.

  
  
Phil flicks his hand up from the table dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. Anyway, he offered to give me lessons.”

  
  
“On getting into Steve's pants?” Sam clarifies skeptically.

  
  
“Yes.” Phil nods conclusively, feeling that wraps things up nicely. But Sam and Steve are still staring at him expectantly. Rolling his eyes up to address the ceiling as he feels the heat rising to his face, Phil admits, “By getting into Clint's pants.”

  
  
“Oh, sweet Lord, have mercy,” Sam moans, and though Phil can’t see him from this angle, it sounds like he’s buried his face in his hands. Thoroughly embarrassed, not to mention done with the conversation, Phil scoots his chair back to leave, but Sam’s foot shoots out under the table and hooks around the leg of Phil’s chair, keeping him in place. “Oh no, you don’t. Take it from the top. We are getting to the bottom of this right now ‘cause it has gone on way too damn long.”

 

Steve stills looks flummoxed as to how he got dragged into the whole thing, but he reaches out to squeeze Phil’s shoulder in encouragement anyway. Phil closes his eyes and resigns himself to finally letting the whole sordid affair out of the box.

* * *

**THEN**

Sex with Phil is—unexpectedly emotional. Not to say that when he’s had sex with other people, it’s been lacking in emotion. There’s always been plenty there. Usually things like attraction and excitement and arousal and enjoyment head up the list.

 

But with Phil under him, other ones like affection and fondness start to factor into it. And when Clint starts sucking a hickey low on his neck (He likes marking his territory, it’s a thing, okay? Tasha says it’s to be expected; he’s a puppy constantly seeking attention.) Phil starts moaning and arches up to follow Clint’s mouth when he draws back, and at that point, Clint’s just fucking spellbound.

 

Clint wants to break out every trick he’s every picked up to wring the very best sounds out of Phil, to leave him shaking and panting and desperate for more. And then when Phil’s spent, Clint wants to cuddle up close and wrap his arms and legs tight around Phil and keep him in Clint’s bed until other base instincts like the need for food force them to get up, and then he wants to hold Phil’s hand all the way to the cafeteria, just because.

 

Sex with Phil leaves Clint pining for everything else with Phil, but unfortunately, the other stuff isn’t exactly on offer, so Clint tries to convince himself to just be happy with the sex. Clint’s got plenty he can teach on the subject, at least, and Phil seems eager to learn.

 

* * *

**WAY BACK WHEN**

Clint’s version of how he and Phil first met goes a little something like this:

 

He’s loitering out in the hall of the History wing where the professors’ offices are all lined up in an intimidating fashion, wondering if he can kill enough time second-guessing himself that he’ll just miss his prof’s office hours entirely and not have to worry about this shit for another week. Mostly, he’s pacing back and forth from the top of the stairs to just in front of the first office door on the hall, which is only the span of a few feet.

 

He hears the main door two floors down bang open and then hasty footsteps ascending the stairs. A few seconds later, another student is rounding the last set of stairs fast enough that he nearly slams into Clint when he clears the landing, and suddenly Clint finds himself a little winded even though they avoided any actual collision.

 

“Sorry!” the guy ( _the cute guy_ , his brain supplies, all flushed and panting from jogging up the stairs) says, and he smiles all bashful before ducking around Clint to get at the History Department bulletin board behind him. Clint just stares as the dude pulls a rolled up stack of flyers out of his hoodie pocket and starts flipping up the loose edges of the papers already on the board, looking for a spare thumb tack.

 

Looking over the guy’s shoulder, Clint can read the flyer’s big, blocky letters easily: _I want YOU to join the History Club_. Pictured underneath the caption is an old-school graphic of Captain America in all his patriotic glory, pointing his judgmental finger all up in Clint’s business.

 

He starts to step away, head back down the stairs and just email his prof a plea for an extension on his paper because he still has literally no idea what to write it on, but then the guy turns back around, looking like he’s trying to reign in an overly-excited grin, and says, “Are you interested in History? The club’s pretty cool. Next meeting we’re going to be discussing war propaganda in comics and cartoons. You should stop by!” With a parting wave, the guy exits the hall just as quickly as he appeared, and Clint’s left blinking bemusedly in his wake.

 

After a moment, Clint turns back to the board and leans in to read the rest of the flyer. There’s a date, time and room number listed at the bottom, along with a small note for interested parties to contact Phil Coulson, Club Secretary, at his school email address.

 

And from that whirlwind meeting on, Clint can’t help but notice the spastic dork that is Phil Coulson all over campus, like reading a strange new word for the first time and then suddenly hearing it everywhere as if the universe is trying to make up for lost time.

 

Of course, getting Phil Coulson to in turn notice _him_ proves to be a far more daunting task than Clint was expecting. It’s nearly as difficult as hanging on to Phil’s attention once he’s got it.

* * *

Seriously though, how has Clint never met this guy before?

Now that Clint’s met him—well, sorta, more like bumped into him, but whatever—Clint keeps spotting Phil walking across the quad after lunch, stumbles across him in the back stacks of the library toting around an armload of books, discovers that they actually share a class—though at least it’s one of those large lecture-hall classes where the professor doesn’t even call roll, so that one’s not really his fault.

He’s a little flabbergasted to discover that their separate groups of friends overlap somewhere around the indomitable trifecta that is Natasha, Maria and Pepper.

Clint’s brooding over a chocolate chip frappucino at the campus coffee shop, mildly put out that Phil hasn’t been back into the shop since he magically appeared in line behind Clint a week ago, when Bobbi plops down in the seat across from him and tears off a huge chunk of the brownie he’s been nibbling on. Clint pouts at her because he knows better than to glare, but she just stares straight back at him, unimpressed, and shoves the pilfered brownie into her mouth all in one go.

“I was eating that,” Clint points out, useless as it is.

“And now I’m eating it.” She smiles back at him, all sweetness and rainbows. “You don’t need more chocolate on top of your giant chocolate milkshake anyway.”

“Frappucino,” Clint corrects her with a proud uptick to his chin because he totes pronounced it correctly that time.

Bobbi scoffs and snatches up the rest of his brownie. “Don’t even try and act like you’d have any clue what they’re called if your new hipster bestie hadn’t intervened.”

“Then how ‘bout you stop acting like you don’t chug a green tea frappe after kickboxing every Wednesday and Friday?” Clint shoots back, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

“Fine,” Bobbi concedes with an easy shrug, and he’s a little disappointed that she’s not in the mood to argue pointlessly today. “Hey, you free tonight?”

Clint doesn’t have any definite plans, really, but he’s also not in the mood for a party. “Why?”

“I’ve got a test coming up in Cognitive Psych and my brain’s doing it’s usual information overload. Need to wind down, and the fastest way to accomplish that…” Bobbi lets her voice trail off meaningfully.

Clint’s face scrunches up as he considers her words. “I think you actually managed to insult me just now. While propositioning me.”

Bobbi rolls her eyes with a smirk. “Whatever. You in or what?”

Clint thinks it over for an honest second, tilts his head back and forth as he debates it, but he’s not feeling it. “Nah, sorry. Raincheck?”

Bobbi’s mouth tugs down at the corner as she looks at him for a second, full focus. “You okay?”

“It’s nothing,” Clint says, shrugging awkwardly. “I just…mighta met somebody.”

Bobbi leans in over the table, a grin stretching wide across her face. “Like a _somebody_ somebody?”

“What does that even mean?”

“Details, Barton!” Bobbi demands. “Chop chop!”

Clint shakes his head, unsure if there’s anything even _to_ tell. “It’s not—I just met him the once okay?”

“Must be something special if that’s all it took to leave a lasting impression.”

Clint shrugs, reaching up to tug at his earlobe as he squirms in his seat. “He’s just—he’s got a nice smile.”

Bobbi’s eyes soften and her grin dims down to a sweet little quirk as she asks, “Does Nice Smile have a name?”

“Phil.”

Bobbi sits back up straight, her eyes widening in recognition. “Coulson? Phil Coulson?”

And Clint recognizes the early warning signs of one of his friends becoming too invested in his personal drama, so he tries to nip it in the bud. “Bobbi—”

“Nope,” she shoots him down with a smile. “Not another word out of you. I’m on the case. You just keeping doing what you do.”

“What?” he asks, but Bobbi’s already out of her seat and half way to the door.

Of course, once Bobbi knows, everyone (well, all of his friends, at least, ‘cause it’s not like anyone else would actually give a shit) knows. And once everyone knows, they’re all a bit too eager to help. Darcy is the one sane port in the storm, and so when Phil suddenly starts showing up at every party his friends either throw or drag him to, he seeks her out because she never bothers to do more than roll her eyes at his shitty excuse for a love life, which is loads better than the rest of his friends.

Nat and Bucky try to draw him in to some kind of weird flip on a double date, pulling him up alongside Phil to challenge them in a game of beer pong. Clint assumes their plan was for Clint to show off and inexplicably impress Phil, since he is normally a mega-stellar beer pong player. But the plan epically backfires when Clint totally chokes the second Phil’s arm brushes against his own. Nat and Bucky thoroughly trounce them, and Phil probably remembers as little after that as Clint does.

Bobbi tries to talk him up to Phil one night. Or at least that’s what Clint assumes she was doing, because otherwise he has absolutely no idea why she’d be loudly discussing his sexual prowess with Jane, Pepper and Tony while Phil was in easy earshot. Tony, being Tony, tries to help a bro out by chiming him in with his own good opinion of Clint’s junk, but at that point, Phil starts to look a little queasy and wanders off towards the bathroom. Clint doesn’t spot him for the rest of the night.

So yes, Darcy is his safe haven, freely offering up her booze when Clint doesn’t dare risk crossing the room because he might bump into Phil. Well, if safe haven’s spend the night alternately enabling your avoidance behavior and lecturing you on stepping up to the plate already.

Everything comes to a head when Tony up and decides to throw a kegger mid-week, and Clint has the displeasure of moving into position to discreetly check Phil out from a distance only to discover that Phil is in fact checking out someone else. Something steely settles in his stomach at the sight, and he wonders if this is what resolve feels like for a second before hoisting his cup up above the crowd and beginning a strategic bob and weave over to Phil’s location.

Enough is enough, he tells himself, rolling back his shoulders as he contemplates his approach.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” someone hisses from behind him—it sounds suspiciously like Darcy, but the music’s too loud to really tell—and then a hand at his back shoves him forward, right into Phil. He turns back to glare at whoever pushed him because it felt deliberate, but no one in the crowd sticks out, and when he twists back around, Phil is turning towards him. Clint hastens to relax his face into some kind of smile.

_Play it cool, Barton._

“So what’s the deal with you and Rogers?” he asks.

_Nailed it._


	6. Chapter 6

**NOW**

Standing outside Clint’s door, wringing his clammy hands in the hem of his shirt, Phil really wants to blame Sam for forcing him to do this, but he is unfortunately all too aware of how the disaster that is his love life is a monster of his own making. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and Phil nearly drops it trying to unlock the screen between the sweat coating his palms and the way his hands won’t stop shaking.

It’s a text from Steve according to the ID that pops up, but the contents are decidedly more Sam:

_Well?_  

Phil has never felt more judged by a fucking emoji in his life.

Taking a second to wet his horribly chapped lips, Phil raises his hand and knocks quickly but loudly. Phil is exceedingly surprised that the door actually opens, probably as surprised as Clint is to find him on the other side.

“Uh, hi?” Phil says. Well, he squeaks it out really, and it’s like he’s fifteen again with his voice breaking whenever he tries to talk all suave-like to Steve, and that’s really not a comparison he should be harping on right now. “Long time no see, right?”

Clint shrugs, but his posture doesn’t actually roll back out of it, and Phil can’t help but think that he looks like he’s hunching in to absorb some kind of blow, which—shit, he’s really made a mess of all this, and now he’s obviously hurting Clint with it. Phil wishes he could just hide in a hole somewhere, but more likely, he deserves to be buried in one instead.

Clint shoves his hands deep in the pocket of his hoodie. “Did you need something?”

“Not really. Well, yes actually,” Phil babbles, wringing his hands while trying to make it look more like absentminded fidgeting than a nervous tick. “I was, uh, wondering? If you wanted to get coffee maybe? You know, to catch up.”

“No, thanks,” Clint says, and it almost sounds sharp, except that Clint looks too dejected for his tone to carry much in the way of ire. He eases past Phil and into the hall without coming even close to making contact, and that hits Phil deep ‘cause just a few weeks ago, Clint was doing everything possible to insinuate himself into Phil’s space, and seriously, how the fuck did he manage to overlook such obvious clues that Clint was into _him_ just as much as he was into the sex? “I don’t have a lot of free time, gotta make up some assignments for my classes.”

Clint starts down the hall without locking up his dorm, but then he never does. Phil takes off right after him, nearly tripping himself up as he tries to stay right on Clint’s heels. “Oh. Um, were you heading to the dining hall? I could go with you. If that’s okay. I haven’t eaten yet, so—”

Clint whirls around abruptly and demands, “Is this some kind of pity-date thing?”

“What? No!” Phil nearly bowls Clint over—and sure, he was probably following Clint a little _too_ close, but he’s gotten used to a certain level of proximity when it comes to Clint—and his hands come up in an effort to catch his balance, but the only thing to hold on to is Clint, who dodges the attempt and Phil is left flailing in the hall like an idiot. Which, yeah, he most likely deserves. “I just haven’t seen you in a while, or talked to you, or—”

Clint cuts him off, and that’s on the plus side for Phil, seeing as he was about to continue with, _or curled up next to you while you’re too blissed out from coming to make a snarky comment about how much I like to cuddle._ Clint growls, “Yeah, well, you made it pretty damn clear that you weren’t much interested in hanging out with me unless orgasms were being exchanged.”

“Huh? That’s not—” Gobsmacked, Phil just stands there for a moment trying to force quit his brain and restart. Because these past three months, he’s never wanted to do anything more than spend whatever time he’s got with Clint, but he’s also been adamant with himself about not reimagining their agreement into something more than it is. So he’s been careful not to really be alone with Clint unless it’s behind closed doors, where he’d really prefer there be no audience given what they tend to get up to.

But meeting up on the quad between classes, running into each other at the coffee shop, attending the same parties thrown by their overlapping circle of friends, stopping by the student center when the free movies were showing—all those times, yeah it’s true, he’d taken every opportunity to make sure someone else tagged along, or he’d led Clint over to an already occupied table, or he’d called out when one of their friends wandered past, but only so that Phil couldn’t get it into his head that they’ve been dating all this time or something.

That is to say, Phil _gets it_. He understands that what they’ve been doing is a friends-with-benefits thing, so he’s done what he can to keep reminders around before his fantasies could get the best of him. But in doing so, okay, he may have made it seem like he wasn’t really interested in being Clint’s _friend_ , which he is but he isn’t, because he wants _so much more_ with Clint.

Fuck. This whole mess, it’s all become a tangle of knots that Phil doesn’t know how to even begin to untie.

“I mean,” Phil flounders, trying to sort everything out in his head so that he can properly explain it all to Clint. “I never meant to make you think—”

“What was I supposed to think?” Clint’s scowling, and it transforms his beautiful face in all the worst ways. “You kept inviting other people along whenever we were doing anything that might be confused for a date! And the one time I actual facts _tried_ to make what we were doing into a date? The sex was all you cared about!”

“What?” Phil asks, blinking rapidly and gaping like a fish out of water. “When did we ever go on a date?” Phil can’t remember it, and that is sure as shit one memory from this debacle he would really like to hold onto.

In front of him, Clint suddenly deflates, the anger melting away from his face as his posture slumps again, his arms coming up to cross over his chest. “Yeah. Right. I’m, uh, I’m just…gonna go now.” Jerking his head back over his shoulder, he pivots and starts to shuffle away down the hall.

Acting on instinct, Phil’s hand shoots out to grab Clint by the elbow, yanking him to a stop. “Wait! That’s not what I meant! I mean, it is, but it’s not?”

Clint quickly shrugs him off. “Look, Wilson put you up to this, right?” he mutters, still with his back to Phil. “Tell him I’m going back to classes on Monday, nothing more to worry about.”

“No, but—what about us?” Phil asks, maybe a tad desperately.

The silence stretches almost too long before Clint replies, “…What about us?”

Hanging back a few steps since Clint hasn’t tried to walk away yet, Phil’s arm stretches out, wanting to place his hand on Clint’s shoulder, look him in the eye, really just any kind of basic contact would do. “Well, are we, I mean—are we, uh, cool?”

Phil can’t see whatever expression Clint makes, but the way he dejectedly shakes his head and hunches further into himself is all too obvious. “Yeah, sure man,” Clint says, his tone gone flat. “Whatever. We’re cool.”

Phil licks his lips, the chapped skin flaring with a bright flash of pain when his tongue moves over the largest split. “So then can we, I don’t know, start over, maybe? Do things right this time?”

“No need. It’s all good,” Clint says brusquely, already starting down the hall again, his voice raising the further away he gets. “Sorry for all the misunderstandings and shit. And my RA dragging you into this just ‘cause I’m having a bad week. I’ll catch up with you later, okay? You know, see you when I see you.”

And then he’s at the stairwell door, shoving through it with his shoulder, and Phil is dead certain that Clint has no intention of ever speaking to him again.

Phil stumbles back, and luckily there’s a wall behind him, otherwise he’d probably have fallen straight on his ass instead of just slowly slumping to the floor seeing as his legs have gone to jell-o. He’s not sure how long he sits there, though he’s not really sitting so much as he’s not managing much of anything else, when the insistent buzzing of his phone in his pocket draws him back from the endless, horrible replay of that encounter that’s on loop in his head.

It’s a text from Sam.

_Sitrep._

Phil lets his head fall back to bang against the wall twice before he sighs and brings up his other hand to type out a reply. _Talking it out was a giant no-go._

_How’d you two ever manage to get together in the first place?_

Something kind of like a laugh gets caught on it’s way up from Phil’s throat, and it comes out far too self-deprecating for his tastes and with an unfortunate edge of hysteria.

_A whole lot of luck and determination?_

_I didn't think it was actually possible for someone to fail this epically at relationships._

Phil scoffs down at his phone and types his response out too fast for the touchscreen to accurately pick up, so he ends up having to re-type most of it.

_Says the so-called Love Guru whose only advice was to "get my feelings out in the open."_

_And did you?_

The simple question seems to glare at him from the screen, mocking him silently.

_...no._

Before Sam can text back, another message pops up, from Steve this time.

_I would ask what happened, but considering the look Sam’s giving his phone right now, I'm pretty sure I can guess._

_Neither of you is being any kind of help._

_We're trying. It's just difficult when you keep insisting on shooting yourself in the dick._

Phil rolls his eyes, and he’s about to turn the damn phone off and go back to wallowing in his misery like a creep in the hallway, but Sam manages to slip another message in before he can.

_What /did/ you manage to say?_

Phil’s reluctant to rewind the conversation in his head yet again, but the more he does, the more obvious it becomes that he didn’t manage to do himself any favors whenever he opened his stupid mouth.

_Not a lot._

_So then what did he say?_

Phil groans and drags a hand through his hair agitatedly.

_I don’t really know? I think I’m in shock. Clint kinda made it seem like he’s been trying to date me this whole time. And somehow I completely failed to notice any dating taking place._

Even though Sam’s got to be on the other side of campus and Phil hasn’t known him long enough to truly have a good grasp on his character, Phil still swears he can feel Sam’s judgment practically oozing out of his phone when he reads the last reply: _You two idiots deserve one another._

* * *

**THEN**

Clint has a plan. And it is a fucking awesome plan, okay? He is going to date Phil like nobody’s ever dated before in the history of humanity and totally win Phil over so that Steve Rogers will never again cross his mind. But, like, he’s going to stealth-date Phil, so that he won’t realize what’s happening until he’s already fallen for Clint, who will do such an amazing job of subliminally planting the idea of what a great boyfriend he’d make, that it’ll just hit Phil one day, and he’ll wake up and go, “Whoa. The perfect guy for me has been right here all along.”

Tasha and Maria are distinctly unimpressed when he outlines the brilliance that is his master plan for them, and he’s not actually sure which one has a more terrifying “Go away, Clint” glare. Bobbi insists that it sounds a lot like the plot to a sub-par rom-com and that he’s going to have to provide the popcorn if he expects her to smile and nod in all the right places. Darcy laughs herself right out of her chair and onto the floor. Not a promising start, but Clint’s managed to work with less.

Given that his usual go-tos for all things relationship related have essentially washed their hands of the whole mess Clint has managed to land himself in, he follows the natural progression of things and takes said plan to Peter. The kid practically hero-worships him, and Clint’s got no doubt that he will see the plan for all it’s hidden glory.

“Are you sure he’s gonna know it’s a date?” Peter asks hesitantly, squinting up at Clint through the bulky frames of his glasses.

“That’s the thing, it’s a _stealth date._ ” Clint spreads his hands out wide for added emphasis. “He’s not supposed to know it’s a date.”

Peter’s whole face scrunches up in confusion. “But if he doesn’t know it’s a date, and you’re being all stealthy about it, how’s that supposed to work?”

“Ugh,” Clint groans, dropping his head down on the picnic tabletop. “Why does everyone keeping doubting me? I can totally pull this off.”

“Sure, okay,” Peter replies as he pats Clint’s head consoling. “So where are you gonna take him for a date that he won’t know is a date?”

Clint pops back up with a grin, eyes wide and eager now that someone’s finally jumping on this gravy train with him. His hands wave up and down and bounce around while he explains, “Well, so, I don’t exactly have a lot in the way of disposable funds, you know—”

“You mean you’re broke.”

“Yeah, _thanks_ , Pete. Anyways—that limits the options, but luckily, college life is full of free social activities!”

Peter’s lips poke out in a pout as he thinks that one over. “Like the movies on the lawn we go to sometimes?”

“Yes! Exactly!” Clint exclaims.

“But wouldn’t you just go to those things with Phil and all your other friends anyway?”

“Dude.” Clint leans forward to flick Peter’s forehead--albeit, _gently_. “Are you even paying attention to me? That’s how he won’t know it’s a date! ‘Cause we do that stuff all the time, so he won’t think it’s anything suspicious.”

Peter, of course, flicks him right back. Granted, he has to get up on his knees on the bench so that he can actually reach over to get at Clint’s head, but the little dude’s nothing if not determined. “So what’s the point then?” Peter demands. “It’s just a friend-date.”

“No, well—yeah, that’s what it’ll _look like_.” Clint shrugs and fights the urge to rub at his forehead, seeing as Peter hasn’t really learned the value of restraint yet. “But then I keep sliding closer, you know? So we’re all up close and personal.”

“Are you going to do the yawn-and-stretch?” Peter narrows his eyes critically at Clint. “‘Cause that doesn’t even work in the movies anymore.”

“Wha— _no,”_ Clint splutters. “I’m way too smooth for that.”

“You’re really not.” Peter shoots back immediately, and Clint wasn’t aware that 12-year-olds were capable of pulling off deadpan, but then Peter’s always been precocious.

* * *

Of course, Clint then runs into the problem of actually _planning_ a stellar stealth-date. Dinner and a movie is obviously pretty standard fare, and given the restrictions Clint’s budget places on things, it’ll be low-key enough that it’s not likely to trigger any actual-date red flags.

Which means first up is taking care of dinner. He’s got an unlimited meal-plan through the university, so maybe he can make use of that? Lots of cuisine on offer, questionable as some of it may be. Still, the pizza is pretty decent and travels in a to-go box well enough.

One obstacle down, Clint then moves on to the problem of the movie. Movie tickets are hella expensive, and even if they went to the cheap theater that only gets the movies that have stopped running everywhere else, the snacks and shit are still majorly hiked up. Also, trying to pay for Phil’s ticket would be a pretty resounding date tip-off. So, alternative movie-viewing options it is.

Clint wants to avoid the weekly campus showcase if at all possible ‘cause, like Peter said, it’s a pretty regular thing for them and all their friends. And knowing their group of friends in particular, they’d start making comments that would definitely give up Clint’s game before he’s managed to convince Phil that his sweater is absolutely made out of boyfriend material.

Clint doesn’t have a TV in his dorm room; he just watches stuff on his school-issued laptop. But that would at least force them to sit close together so they could both watch the movie, which Clint figures sounds pretty promising, all things considered.

Next up, though, is what to watch? Darcy’s got a pretty extensive DVD collection, but Clint’s seen them all a gazillion times, and Phil’s probably pretty familiar with most of them too. Something that just came out then. But that just brings Clint back around to the money issue, unless he wants to try and rent something from Redbox.

Twenty minutes online quickly reveals that there is nothing good in Redbox, which is disappointing but not surprising. Clint spends the next half hour laying on his bed with his feet thrown up and tapping on the wall, racking his brain for a movie that Phil will like because Clint figures that impressing Phil should be one of the main objectives of his master plan, and he’s not really sure how else to impress Phil on a movie date that he doesn’t know is a date.

In the end, he has no choice but to fall back on Darcy’s collection, after all. He leaves her room with a bag full of movies (mostly Darcy’s suggestions) that are “date worthy.” There’s bound to be something in the stack that Phil will want to watch.

Plan finally set, Clint rolls his shoulders back and sets out to win him his man.


End file.
